NORTHERN IRELAND
HC Deb 31 January 1972 vol 830 cc32-43
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Reginald Maudling) With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement.
"The House will have heard with deep anxiety that a number of people were killed and injured in the course of disturbances in Londonderry yesterday.
A march was organised in deliberate defiance of the legal order banning marches. The G.O.C. Northern Ireland has reported that at an appropriate point this march was stopped by the security forces and that those who were under the control of the organisers turned back. A large number of trouble-makers refused to accept the instructions of the march stewards and attacked the Army with stones, bottles, steel bars and canisters of C.S. The Army met this assault with two water cannon, C.S., and rubber bullets only. The G.O.C. has further reported that when the Army advanced to make arrests among the trouble-makers they came under fire from a block of flats and other quarters. At this stage the members of the orderly, although illegal, march were no longer in the near vicinity. The Army returned the fire directed at them with aimed shots and inflicted a number of casualties on those who were attacking them with firearms and with bombs."
